


White Noise

by elwing_alcyone



Category: Death Note
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Community: 30_kisses, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-02
Updated: 2010-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwing_alcyone/pseuds/elwing_alcyone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mello has left the Wammy's House, and Matt and Near deal with his absence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Noise

**Author's Note:**

> For 30_kisses prompt #4: our distance and that person.

Since lunchtime the clouds had devoured the light and turned it to water, and it came down in bullets. The fluorescent lights of the classroom blazed against the grey-green darkness outside the window.

Mello was not there. He had not come in when Near did half an hour ago, and Near was steadily refusing to let Matt catch his eye. He wasn't working, either. Just sitting.

Matt licked his finger to turn a page, and movement outside caught his eye. Stray cat. No. Mello.

Mello?

He sat up straighter, staring as Mello wrenched the iron gate open and went through, his shoulders hunched against the rain. The _clang_ the gate made when he pulled it shut was audible, even from up here.

'Where's Mello going?' he asked aloud, interrupting the teacher. Everyone turned to look at him, and Near stirred. Matt concentrated on him. 'Where's he going?'

'I don't know.'

'Matt, you're disturbing the lesson,' said the teacher. 'Would you like to wait until afterwards?'

'No, I actually wouldn't. Near, what's going on?'

Near reached up and started to tug at his hair, looking more tense than usual. 'L is dead.'

It was a bomb. The beginning of a riot. Even the teacher was stunned, and everyone was talking and standing up at once, meaningless noise and movement, with two still points. Near twisted his hair around his finger silently, and Matt stared motionless out of the window. Mello was already gone.

*

He walked in circles around the room, tidying things up and untidying them again, opening the window to let the rain in and the cigarette smoke out. There were still things here, because a life didn't fit in a backpack. There were still essays Mello hadn't finished on the desk, and ones he had, stuffed between books on the shelf. A photograph he'd meant to destroy when Kira appeared, but had ended up using as a bookmark. Half a bar of chocolate he hadn't bothered to take with him. One black shirt crumpled on the floor, which Matt kept treading on until he tried to kick it under the bed and heard it rip. And all the screaming spaces where Mello could have left a note, and hadn't.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

*

In the evening he sat at the dinner table with an empty plate, and chewed on the bare metal of his fork. It made his teeth vibrate. He was watching the other end of the table, where Near sat, eating peas one by one and ignoring everything else.

Matt had a vision of pulling him outside into the rain and dragging him through the mud to see what he'd do about it. If he kept sitting there, doing nothing, not even caring, Matt was going to stab him with the fork. In the skull. It would feel like breaking an egg.

Near met his eyes, and Matt bit through the inside of his cheek.

*

He went back to Mello's room after lights-out. The photograph was already gone, but he didn't want it anyway. He didn't know what he wanted.

Underneath the window, the carpet was soaking wet, and the air was damp and cold. It didn't feel lived-in any more. It felt abandoned.

Didn't take long.

Matt closed the door and sat against it, bitterly defiant - _he's not coming back, so I'm not in anybody's way_. He didn't even understand why he wanted to be here, but it didn't stop him sitting where he was until the draught under the door had made his back numb and there were sixteen cigarette butts lined up on the floor beside him.

See what it was like to be cold and passive, like Near. If he could do that, maybe he wouldn't care, either. But that wasn't really it. He was waiting.

He heard the clock downstairs chime, eleven, twelve, one, and all the halves. He heard several pairs of feet shuffling past nervously, secretly, outside the door, to and from the library.

_Where is he now?_ Images of Mello in an airport, at a station, squatting in a ruined church, curled up in a shop doorway. Sitting outside the gate of the orphanage, shivering, unable to stay or leave. Handcuffed to some sicko's radiator in the middle of a grimy city, watching spiders move across the floor, waiting to die. Dead already, too reckless, or maybe Kira found out about the time he shoplifted six bars of chocolate from the newsagent's, and decided not to risk letting him grow into a proper felon. _Where is he now? Where will he be tomorrow?_

And he thought of nonsensical things, like Mello in Russia with a fur hat. Or mundane and practical things, like Mello driving an old car around a wasteland, learning the gears and brakes and steering. Or just Mello. Mello, and the dragging whisper of the rain - the colourless sound that mattered only when it compensated for the absence of things.

At half past one he heard footsteps - no, not even footsteps, just a brushing of cloth on the tiled floor, hardly distinguishable from the sound of the rain – and then the handle squeaked, and the door pushed against his back. Then an uncertain pause.

He stood up and opened the door for Near. 'You took it.'

'Took what?'

'You know what.' The door clicked shut.

'The photograph? Yes. I didn't know you wanted it. I didn't think it was very sensible to leave it lying around, so I decided to keep it safe. You're welcome to have it.'

'I don't _want_ it!'

'If you shout, you'll wake everyone, and we'll both be in trouble.'

'I don't give a shit if we get in trouble.'

'I do.'

'Like hell you do!'

'Please keep your voice down.' Near's voice was clipped and cool. It wasn't a request. Matt hit him.

He wanted a fight, more than anything, but Near just shrank like paper held close to a flame, back against the door, and then put his clenched hand against his cheekbone, walked past Matt and went to sit on the bed.

'That,' he said, 'was not polite.' There was a low tremor in his voice now, somewhere beneath the taut control.

Matt's heart was still pounding, his fists still throbbing as if they wanted him to break his knuckles on somebody else's bones, but it was difficult to keep attacking someone who offered no resistance at all. He hated the way Near looked, sitting there on the bed, huddled and small and vulnerable, and very young. This was Near's fault, all of it - everything would be different if he weren't around. So how did he dare to make Matt feel guilty?

He crossed the room in two strides, pushed Near back and pinned him to the bed. 'I wasn't trying to be polite,' he snarled. 'And I wish you wouldn't either. You don't mean a word of it, you condescending prick. Say something you really think for a change.'

Near looked up at him without speaking. Here, it smelled like Mello, like chocolate and the lightning building in the sky outside. The room didn't feel abandoned yet after all; it was still full of Mello's presence, and Near's wasn't enough to make a dent in it.

Near was not soft. He was thin and sharp, and if Matt closed his eyes, it could have been Mello. Could have been. Until Matt kissed him and he squirmed and made angry, protesting noises, and tasted of nothing and smelled of nothing. The lightning and the thunder both arrived together, and the illusion shattered.

Even as he scrambled ungracefully off Near and stood up, Matt was thinking that it wasn't really strange that he should have hit Near and then kissed him within moments. If Mello were to turn up right now, Matt would probably do exactly the same to him.

Near sat up as soon as Matt's weight was removed, reaching reflexively for a lock of hair and winding it so tightly that the end of his finger turned white.

'What did you do that for?' he mumbled, diligently avoiding Matt's eyes.

'It wasn't personal, or anything,' Matt said. 'Just because you're here, and Mello's not.'

Saying it so starkly started an ache, like pressing at a bruise. Mello was out there, somewhere, and Matt was stuck in Wammy's House, with Near and a damp room being stripped of Mello's presence, and both were cold and neither was friendly, but there was nothing else to cling to. Not that he was clinging.

'We're so fucked, you and me, Near,' he said, going for another cigarette.

'You're speaking figuratively, I assume.'

Matt looked at him with raised eyebrows. 'Well, unless I missed something just now. I mean it's going to be boring as hell without Mello.'

'I don't see why. I don't think it matters much that he's gone.'

Matt grinned bitterly around the cigarette. 'Liar. You're here too, aren't you?'

Thunder rumbled again, farther away this time. Matt didn't move any closer to Near, because all of Near's body language warned against it, and Matt didn't want to anyway. But he didn't move to go, and neither did Near. It was nothing much, just something temporary - something to fill the distance.


End file.
